Obama to announce training initiative for high-tech jobs

[IDemo]

Source: Reuters

President Barack Obama on Monday will announce a program to provide more Americans with the training needed to secure jobs in the high-technology industry, the White House said.

The initiative, which Obama will detail at a National League of Cities conference in Washington, will include "collaboration with local government leaders - working with each other and with national employers - that are committed to expanding access to tech jobs in their communities," the White House statement said on Sunday.

The statement added there were more than 500,000 job openings in such fields as software development and cybersecurity and that the average salary in jobs requiring information technology skills was 50 percent higher than the average private-sector job in the United States.

"Helping more Americans train and connect to these jobs is a key element of the President’s middle-class economics agenda," the White House statement said.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/09/us-usa-obama-employment-idUSKBN0M501720150309

[GuntherGebelWilliams]

1. *Sigh* Nothing controversial about that

Why didn't he do this 6 years ago?

[JDPriestly]

2. I hope this plan becomes reality! Great idea!

But let's don't forget that our children and grandchildren need to also learn history, to read great literature, to study psychology and sociology and philosophy as well as languages.

Technical training may make a person more employable and result in a higher salary. But a liberal arts education results in a richer life, and when more people know more about history, literature, psychology, sociology and philosophy (to name a few important subjects), our country is a better place for all of us.

[Man from Pickens]

3. Can Americans get an H1-B?

that seems to be what the big employers are really looking for

the US has tons of untapped IT talent already but it's not being used!

[cstanleytech]

12. Bingo. The abuse of those as well as the contracting out to 3rd parties are the real problems.

[Newsjock]

4. But will Americans work for $1.21 per hour like some high-tech employers demand?

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26778017/tech-company-paid-employees-from-india-little-1

Electronics for Imaging paid several employees from India as little as $1.21 an hour to help install computer systems at the company's Fremont headquarters, federal labor officials said Wednesday.

"We are not going to tolerate this kind of behavior from employers," said Susana Blanco, district director of the U.S. Labor Department's wage and hour division in San Francisco.

The incident is a reminder that even amid a labor market that has boomed in recent years in Silicon Valley and other parts of the Bay Area, income inequality and payments of relatively low wages can still be a problem for workers in the region. The workers were paid in Indian rupees.

[still_one]

5. That is great, but it won't help a 50 plus year old laid off auto worker. In addition, not everyone

has the mind-set for high tech, which is why the program would be better served to provide training on an individual need basis

[Vincardog]

6. It won't help a 59 yo laid off IT worker either. He needs to kill the H1 program all together.

The problem is never the workers skills it is the PAY scale.

[antigop]

7. what you said. nt

[still_one]

10. You are bringing up another valid issue, especially in regard to the high tech field. The big lie

is the myth that there are not enough people here qualified to do the work, when the reality is there are plenty of programmers here, it is just that companies can get "more bang for their buck" by other means

Also, training a programer is jnot ust a quick 9 month training course, it has to start when they are young.

[Vincardog]

13. Of course they don't want to pay those of us with training and 20 years experience any more

than they can get away with paying untrained imported labor.

[KG]

8. lotsa openings for someone with specialized skills, multiple degrees, decades of experience: $15 hr

[whereisjustice]

9. Must be feeling guilty about the millions of jobs that will be lost with TPP... funny thing is

in the early to mid 2000s, they did the same thing.

The political class who can't even handle email, told us all we were too technologically stupid to deserve a job.

Millions of laid-off workers and veterans trained for IT jobs only to be told India was cheaper and better. Wall Street then spent billions training Mexico, China and India to take jobs from American workers.

The jobs will go to the country that offers the lowest wages and the least amount of worker protections.

It's a pattern that continues today because history repeats itself.

[quadrature]

11. this is recycled 'news' from 2010

http://www.informationweek.com/software/us-to-train-3000-offshore-it-workers/d/d-id/1091340?

USAID will train people in
Sri Lanka to compete with Americans